August, 2015

Love without power is anemic, as Martin Luther King Jr pointed out (and power without love is tyranny).

You cannot protect what you love if you do not have power.

You sure as hell can’t change the world.

We *cannot* fall into the trap of accepting a very narrow, top-down, command-and-control definition as the essential nature of ‘power’, to the point where we dismiss the subject altogether because it is distasteful to us.

The point is not to play the same old game, whether we’re buying into it or rebelling against it. Either way, you’re still letting the other person define the terms and set the rules

(which will *not* be in your favor).

The point is to keep your eye to the horizon, your ear to the ground, and channel the resources around you and the people on your side to discover a new game that embodies new values.

To claim — and to share, to spread, to enable, to inspire — the power to do that.

Personal boundaries are the place where I AM transforms into I AM NOT.

People can knock on your doors all they want; you are under no obligation to let them in.

Your invitations are sacred.

If you never invite anyone inside your walls, you will die of loneliness. If you invite everyone, you will also die of loneliness – or exhaustion, or disease, or violence.

So there needs to be a velvet rope and a guest list.

The enemy will smash your art and rewrite your manifesto. They will hollow you out into a puppet who might wear cool outfits, but gets no respect.

A soul is not a static thing – it grows if you nurture it, and withers if you don’t. It glows with magic or disappears beneath layers of muck and graffiti and crusted blood. You can save your soul – but you must kick out the enemy. You must mark out a safety zone, so you can tend to the wounded, give your dead a proper burial, and rebirth your sense of self.

The stronger and more powerful your I AM becomes, the lower the walls need to be.